- Branche: Art history
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New way of painting landscape and scenes of everyday life developed in France by Monet and others from early 1860s. Based on practice of painting finished pictures out of doors, as opposed to simply making sketches (actually pioneered in Britain by Constable around 1813-17). Result was greater awareness of light and colour and the shifting pattern of the natural scene. Brushwork became rapid and broken into separate dabs to render these effects. First group exhibition Paris 1874 greeted with derision, Monet's Impression, Sunrise being particularly singled out and giving its name to the movement. Seven further exhibitions held at intervals to 1886. Other core artists, Camille Pissarro, Renoir, plus Degas and Manet in slightly tangential relationship. Second generation of Post-Impressionism.
Industry:Art history
A radical group of young artists within the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. The Independent Group, or IG, was first convened in the winter of 1952-3 and then again in 1953-4. It was responsible for the formulation, discussion and dissemination of many of the basic ideas of British Pop art and of much other new British art in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Leading artists involved were Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson, John McHale, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull. The IG also included the critics Lawrence Alloway and Rayner Banham, and the architects Colin St John Wilson, and Alison and Peter Smithson (see Brutalism). In 1953 the IG staged the exhibition Parallel of Art and Life and in 1956 the ground-breaking This is Tomorrow. This exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London was an expression of the IG's pioneering interest in popular and commercial culture. As Alloway put it: 'movies, science fiction, advertising, Pop music. We felt none of the dislike of commercial culture standard among most intellectuals, but accepted it as fact, discussed it in detail, and consumed it enthusiastically'. This is Tomorrow consisted of a series of environments, and a juke box played continuously.
Industry:Art history
The design of mass-produced, machine-made goods. The word was first used in America in the 1920s to describe the work of specialist designers who worked on product design. Earlier, Henry Ford's introduction in 1913 of the production line to the motor car industry, and subsequently to the production of other merchandise, led to a move in the art world to attempt to weld art and technology together. Constructivism in Russia and the Bauhaus in Germany were inspired by the new machine age; putting emphasis on form following function they created design that had an abstract, geometric form.
Industry:Art history
An ancient writing and drawing medium, ink is still most commonly made of carbon and binders, but historically was also made from plant or animal sources such as iron gall and sepia. Inks are traditionally black or brown in colour, but can also contain coloured dyes or pigments. They are traditionally used with sable brushes or varieties of quill, reed or pen.
Industry:Art history
Term used to describe mixed-media art works which occupy an entire room or gallery space and into which usually the spectator can enter. Some installations, however, are designed simply to be walked around and contemplated, or are so fragile that they can only be viewed from a doorway, or one end of a room. Installation art emerged from the earlier form of the Environment. One of the originators of Environments was the American artist Allan Kaprow in works made from about 1957 on. In an undated interview published in 1965 Kaprow said of his first Environment: 'I just simply filled the whole gallery up—When you opened the door you found yourself in the midst of an entire Environment—The materials were varied: sheets of plastic, crumpled up cellophane, tangles of Scotch tape, sections of slashed and daubed enamel and pieces of coloured cloth'. There were also lights hung within all this and 'five tape machines spread around the space played electronic sounds which I had composed'. Miscellaneous materials (mixed media), light and sound have remained fundamental to installation art. From that time on the creation of installations became a major strand in modern art, increasingly from about 1990, and many artists have made them. In 1961 in New York, Claes Oldenburg created an early Environment, The Store, from which his Counter and Plates with Potato and Ham comes. One of the outstanding creators of installations using light is James Turrell.
Industry:Art history
Also described as environments, the term is used to describe mixed-media constructions or assemblages usually designed for a specific place and for a temporary period of time. Works often occupy an entire room or gallery space that the spectator invariably has to walk through in order to engage fully with the work of art. Some installations, however, are designed simply to be walked around and contemplated, or are so fragile that they can only be viewed from a doorway, or one end of a room. Installation art emerged from the earlier form of the environment. One of the originators of environments was the American artist Allan Kaprow in works made from about 1957 onwards. In an undated interview published in 1965 Kaprow said of his first environment: 'I just simply filled the whole gallery up—When you opened the door you found yourself in the midst of an entire Environment—The materials were varied: sheets of plastic, crumpled up cellophane, tangles of Scotch tape, sections of slashed and daubed enamel and pieces of coloured cloth. ' There were also lights hung within all this and 'five tape machines spread around the space played electronic sounds which I had composed. ' Miscellaneous materials (mixed media), light and sound have remained fundamental to Installation art. From that time on the creation of installations became a major strand in modern art, increasingly from about 1990, and many artists have made them. In 1961 in New York, Claes Oldenburg created an early environment, The Store, from which his Counter and Plates with Potato and Ham comes. One of the outstanding creators of installations using light is James Turrell.
Industry:Art history
The act of critiquing an institution as artistic practice, the institution usually being a museum or an art gallery. Institutional criticism began in the late 1960s when artists began to create art in response to the institutions that bought and exhibited their work. In the 1960s the art institution was often perceived as a place of 'cultural confinement' and thus something to attack aesthetically, politically and theoretically. Hans Haacke is a leading exponent of Institutional critique, particularly targeting funding and donations given to museums and galleries. In 1971, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne rejected his work Manet-Projekt 74 from one of their shows. The work was related to the museums' recent acquisition of Edouard Manet's Bunch of Asparagus and detailed the provenance of the painting and Nazi background of the donor. During the 1990s it became a fashion for critical discussions to be held by curators and directors within art galleries and museums that centred on this very subject, thereby making the institution not only the problem but also the solution. This has changed the nature of Institutional critique, something that is reflected in the art of Carey Young, who considers this dilemma.
Industry:Art history
Any form of printmaking in which the image is produced by incising into the printing plate and where it is the incised line or area that holds the ink. Intaglio methods include etching, drypoint, engraving, and wood engraving.
Industry:Art history
In 1932 the Museum of Modern Art in New York held the first architectural exhibition featuring architects associated with the Modern Movement. International Style was the term coined by historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and architect Philip Johnson for the catalogue. Most of the architects defined by International Style were European with a considerable German brigade emerging from the Bauhaus, namely Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Ernst May, Erich Mendelsohn, Mies van der Rohe and Hans Scharoun; other Europeans included France's Le Corbusier, Italy's Luigi Figini and Finland's Alvar Aalto. The majority of the buildings defined by International Style were similar in that they were rectilinear, undecorated, asymmetrical and white, although after the Second World War this was modified as a matter of economy in dealing with post-war reconstruction and later, with the introduction of industrial steel and glass. International Style is seen as single-handedly transforming the skylines of every major city in the world with its simple cubic forms.
Industry:Art history
Originally, a French term applied to the quiet domestic scenes of Bonnard and Vuillard. Since applied widely to any painting of such subject matter. An outstanding example is Gwen John.
Industry:Art history
